The Author – Bart Busschots
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Sep
21
Photo of the Week 31 – The Approaching Storm
Filed Under Photography on September 21, 2008 | 1 Comment
I was very lucky not to get very wet while shooting this shot. I should probably have run straight for shelter but it was just too spectacular shot not to take the time capture it. This is a stitching together of five over-lapping shots at 18mm. As soon as I took the shot I bundled the camera into my bag and cycled home as quick as I could, I made it in the door with about ten seconds to spare before the heavens opened!
This shot was taken from Mullen Bridge (the bridge on the Straffan road at the entrance to the train station) looking East towards Dublin. The track you see is the Dublin to Sligo railway line and the canal is the Royal Canal which connects Dublin to the river Shannon.
[tags]panorama, photography, storm, clouds, Maynooth, Ireland, Kildare, Royal Canal[/tags]
Sep
19
iPhone Development – An Inside View
Filed Under Software Development, Computers & Tech on September 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Just a very short follow-on post related to my last iPhone post. First, we have the bad, a diary by a developers showing just how arduous the process is here. The key quote is his conclusion:
Development for iPhone is an incredibly difficult process, much more difficult than it needs to be. The arduous process of shipping an application for the Mac suddenly appears to be absolutely straightforward after going through this mess. I really don’t envy those companies who have staked their success to the iPhone platform. The amount of arbitrary hassle, uncertainty, and delay in the process can only feel vastly worse when your livelihood depends on it.
Secondly, the other side of the coin, why the hassle is worth persisting with, there’s money in them there hills!
[tags]iPhone, Apple, development[/tags]
Sep
17
Apple – Don’t Defecate on Your Developers!
Filed Under Software Development, Computers & Tech on September 17, 2008 | 7 Comments
When Apple announced the app store I was a little nervous, but I could see the positive side and was prepared to believe that Apple would be good gate-keepers. It soon because clear I was too optimistic. I was already annoyed with Apple when they started to impose their taste on the world by banning joke apps they didn’t approve of like Slasher and Pull my Finger. Myself and Allison had a big argument about it a little over a month ago on NosillaCast Episode 164. Allison felt that Apple should be allowed to choose what to sell in their store, and she has a point, however, when you block all other options and make yourself the sole distributor of software for an entire platform it’s not wise to go all Victorian with your policies. Obviously Apple CAN block what ever they want, I just think they shouldn’t because it’s bad for users, bad for developers, bad for the platform, and hence, bad for Apple. My solution was simple, have a rating system. If you think something is rude or in poor taste give it an explicit rating! At that stage we were just talking about matters of taste, this week things have taken a very different turn and Apple have moved on from Victorian prudishness to anti-competitive and anti-use practices. They have denied a better podcatcher access to the store because it competes with Apple software. Granted, Apple use the word “duplicate”, but it comes to the same thing in my mind, if you’re not allowed to duplicate any functionality Apple implement then you’re not allowed to compete and that’s bad. To be honest I’m shocked Apple were so blatant about this. When you start creating monopolies for yourself and then banning competition it’s hardly a massive leap to jump to “anti-trust”.
[tags]Apple, iPhone, iPod Touch, App Store, developers[/tags]
Sep
16
Apple Finally Fix DSN Flaw
Filed Under Security, Computers & Tech on September 16, 2008 | 1 Comment
It’s taken them months, but Apple have finally caught up with the rest of the world and patched the critical DNS flaw disclosed in early June. This is Apple’s second attempt at patching it, they did a very poor job on their first attempt, but thankfully they seem to have gotten it right this time. It’s taken Apple over three months to patch OS X, this is totally rediculous considering Apple users the standard ISC implementation for both their DNS server and DNS resolver in OS X. ISC released patches on the 8th of June, it took Apple till the 15th of September to get their update out!
For a more detailed look at the two major security updates Apple released in the last few days (one for iPhone/iPod Touch, and one for OS X 10.5 and 10.4) check out my analysis on the IMP blog.
[tags]IMP, DNS, Apple, OS X, security, vulnerability[/tags]
Sep
14
Photo of the Week 30 – Vintage Power
Filed Under Photography on September 14, 2008 | 2 Comments
This is an old photo which I recently scanned. It was taken in early January 2000 in my home town of Duffel in Belgium with my trusty old Olympus OM/1. The reason the shot is to grainy is that I used to have a bit of a thing for fast films, in particular Kodak Gold 800 Zoom. As seems to be the norm for this series, I’m not really sure why I like this shot, I just do and have since the first time I saw it when I got my photos back from my local One Hour Photo (remember those?).
This is Belgian electric locomotive number 2334 which rather un-imaginatively belongs to NMBS/SNCB Class 23. These locomotives are still in service today despite now being over 50 years old (having been built between 1955 and 1957).
[tags]NMBS, SNCB, Belgium, Locomotive, Duffel, train, photography[/tags]
Sep
9
My Butterfly Collection
Filed Under Photography on September 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment
As the butterfly season comes to an end here in Ireland for another year I’ve taken some time over the past few days to sort and process my best Irish butterfly pictures and compile them into a Flickr Set. In the long term I’m planning on getting photographs of all 28 species of butterfly that exist in Ireland, but that will take quite some time and quite a bit of travelling. This collection represents my best shots from this year and last, though the vast majority are from this year. My aim is to have at least two shots of each species, a top view of the open wings, and a side view of the closed wings. The differences between these two views can be very dramatic.
[tags]photography, Ireland, butterfly[/tags]
Sep
8
Photo of the Week 29 – St. Mary’s By Night
Filed Under Photography on September 8, 2008 | 4 Comments
St. Mary’s Square is the second quadrangle on the St. Patrick’s College campus. It’s smaller and less well known than St. Joseph’s square. The square was rather controversially re-designed with a very modern water garden a decade or two ago. Personally I love it. I think it’s a great melding of the old with the new. This shot was taken on the central island within the water garden with the largest stone fountain in the left foreground.
In many ways this shot is one of the most extreme I’ve ever taken. The only source of light in the scene is the windows around the square. this lead to a gigantic dynamic range with the interior of the windows needing an exposure of a fraction of a second and the interior of the square requiring an exposure of a few minutes. Bridging this range required combining ten exposures over a range of 9 f stops (1 EV steps from -4 to +5) totalling about 8 minutes into a single HDR image.
[tags]Maynooth, Kildare, Ireland, SPCM, HDR, night, photography[/tags]